Pa. charter school ratings plummet under new calculations

Federal government says state had used grading system that was too lenient.

January 22, 2013|By Steve Esack and Eugene Tauber, Of The Morning Call

The number of charter schools hitting testing benchmarks plummeted after the federal government said the state Education Department graded them too leniently.

At first, nearly half of the state's 156 charter schools whose students took the 2012 PSSA math and reading tests made so-called Adequate Yearly Progress under a new grading system Education Secretary Ron Tomalis implemented last summer.

The new system, which Tomalis initiated without federal approval and at the behest of a charter school lobbying group, made it easier for charter schools to reach federal standards than traditional public schools. It classified charters, no matter their size, as school districts, which are measured on a broader scale than individual schools.

The U.S. Department of Education, however, shot down that change in November. It ordered Pennsylvania to recalculate the charters' AYP status on the school level and publicize the results by January. So under the federal order, charters must have the school-level and district-level grades.

Under Tomalis' system, 77 charter schools — or 49 percent — made AYP when they were measured as school districts. But when tabulated as individual schools, only 43 — or 28 percent — made AYP, according to a Morning Call analysis of state data.

By comparison, 49 percent of the state's public schools made AYP and about 61 percent of the state's 499 school districts that administered the PSSAs did, too.

Of the seven charter schools in Lehigh and Northampton counties, only the Lehigh Valley Academy Charter School was affected by the change. It made AYP as a district, but dropped to warning status as a school.

Roberto Clemente in Allentown and Seven Generations in Emmaus made AYP on both grading scales.

Lincoln Leadership in Allentown, and The Lehigh Valley Performing Arts High School, Vitalistic Therapeutic and Dual Language, all in Bethlehem, missed it on both levels. (Vitalistic will close Friday for financial reasons.)

That equates to about 29 percent AYP success rate on a school-level basis and a 43 percent success rate on the district level for Valley charters, The Morning Call's analysis shows.

Pennsylvania had long graded charter schools, which are funded with tax dollars, as individual schools. Under such a system, a school achieves AYP if a percentage of its students in each tested grade scores proficient or advanced through straight or curved scores. Student scores are further broken down by student demographics. If at least one demographic group in any grade level fails, the whole school fails.

A school district is measured on a broader scale that uses grade spans: 3-5 for elementary schools; 6-8 for middle schools and 9-12 for high schools (though only 11th-graders are tested). Only one of the three grade spans needs to hit the testing targets for a district to make AYP.

Tomalis did not announce he had switched over to a district-based system for charter schools when he released 2012 PSSA results in September. But he did blame the drop in statewide PSSA scores on tighter testing rules he instituted in response to what he said were episodes of cheating.

Tim Eller, Department of Education spokesman, declined to answer questions about the disparity The Morning Call's analysis showed between the two types of charter school results.

In an email, Eller said the federal government's Nov. 19 order was not a rejection. He noted the federal government is allowing the state to concurrently grade charters as school districts, which in educational lexicon are called local education agencies.

"The U.S. Department of Education said that in order to assign an AYP status to a charter as [a local government agency], the department also had to assign a building level AYP, which the department has done," he said.

"Now, all traditional public schools and charter schools will receive an AYP status at the building level and at the [local education agency] level."

The recalculated AYP ratings were welcomed by public school officials, who viewed the more lenient system as another example of Gov. Tom Corbett's efforts to push his school choice initiatives.

On Oct. 2, soon after the AYP results were announced, the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, which had lobbied Tomalis for the school district designation, seized on them. It issued a news release titled "Charter Schools Outperforming District Schools in Cities, Statewide."

Joseph Roy, superintendent of the Bethlehem Area School District, said Tomalis was trying to make school districts look worse than charters by changing AYP rules for charters and blaming cheating for a drop in test scores.

"In order to make that case, they have done things that have been inaccurate," Roy said. "I am happy this is now being corrected."